Plonka's Blog

Friday, March 28, 2008

Some may be wondering at my quietness. I'll be making the rounds shortly but in the mean time, please accept my apologies. There are however, mitigating circumstances.

Eostre. Yes, we celebrated the autumnal equinox with our usual gusto and flair. That mean lot's of chocolate and a few days of family life, which we enjoyed immensely, thank you.

But every silver lining has its cloud and my cloud is a dark one indeed. Interest rates are not a concern at the moment because a number of us got made redundant. Notice I didn't say "retrenched", that would make sense and would make life a little easier. But I work for EDS which means I now have to endure a 5 week "redeployment plan", which translates in plain English to "the EDS redundancy package avoidance plan". We won't know about any packages for at least 2 weeks.

A package would be nice, but I have a mortgage and a family to feed, so instead of reading blogs for the last week or so, I've been reading job ads. It's making my eyes water, but it's a numbers game in I.T. these days (especially so if you are 43 years old) and to land one, you must apply for many, so that's what I'm doing at the moment.

14 Comments:

Hm...figured "something" was going on, glad you finally let us knowyou're not ill, etc. I've read twice now, on 'net news sources, that healthcare, environmental and internatl business are 3 of the 5"recession proof" fields to be in.

The local Jr./community college just got a $1 million grant this wk from the Feds, I guess= anyway, the school is going to use it to help fund I.T. courses for 312 students.

Bugger.I know what you mean about trying to get an IT job (or any job) when you're in your forties bloke. About the only industry that looks for people that 'old' is the transport industry. It seems IT industry looks for young geeks, thinking they are more savvy.

Maybe we can get pensioned off earlier so we can enjoy retirement while we're still 'young'. Leave the work to the kids hey?

Nothing's "recession proof". At the end of the day you still need to buy groceries and they keep going up while your wage stays static. It sucks... And I know you read the stuff I wrote about CO2 emissions. I wouldn't last a minute in any "green" industry, if such a thing can truly be said to exist.

Gryph:

*sigh* Yep, we're old at 40, but I like your plan. I have 2 here we can put to work immediately...;)

And *EEK*!!! Still, it is a nice example of a T-Rex don't you think?

Sean:

Thanks for the vote of confidence. I will happily admit to 20 years experience and the best "desk side manner" in the business. I'd be only to happy to oblige too, except that your place of work is far removed from my place of residence. By quite some distance...

40's isn't "old"-- you'd think co's would value someone with experience and customer focused. Guess not. I wonder if they think/know they can hire in the new"kids" for cheaper???

There are things I wouldn't last a day @ either-working with animals (I'd take all the unwanted ones home), being a nurse (too much crap from physicians and pts families, I've seen it happen) andanything to do with math/algebra.

Exactly right. A graduate comes in at around $30k - $45k depending on the job while an experienced hacker like me will set you back about $70k+ and the plus can get big if you want people management and high level reporting/accountability.

Dikkii:

I'd love to get back into the finance sector. That's where the pay is best...:)

I do problem/incident management and application/system support, I have 20 years in operations and systems administration and I'm a team leader.

Plenty of times in life the old addage "You get what you pay for"applies. This would be one of "those times". I can't imaginethat it won't be long & someone will be smart enough to see what acomplete pkg they'd get with you,you'd hit the ground running andbe a big plus. Plus you aren'tjudgemental and get along with justabout anyone, for the long run goodof the co., a "project", whatever...